France will face a months-long coronavirus epidemic that will overwhelm its health system if something does not change, one of the country’s top medical figures warned yesterday, as the global death toll inched towards one million.
In more positive news, residents of the Chinese city of Wuhan — where the virus emerged last year — reported a hesitant return to normalcy, while the French Open got underway at Roland Garros in Paris.
“The second wave is arriving faster than we thought,” Patrick Bouet, head of National Council of the Order of Doctors in France, told the weekly Journal du Dimanche.
Fresh restrictions to slow the spread of the disease in France’s worst-hit areas, including the Mediterranean city of Marseille and the Paris region, have run into local resistance.❐
